


We Live On (Long After)

by ParadifeLoft



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, F/M, Love Triangles, Nargothrond, but for those pesky internalised Laws and Customs societal mores, hunting the unicorn that is writing a female character as shallow but yet, still likeable and not beset by textual misogyny, which should clearly just become threesomes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-08-25
Packaged: 2017-12-24 16:29:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/942093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadifeLoft/pseuds/ParadifeLoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finduilas spends time with Gwindor and Turin both, and finds her romantic affection shifting along with the raising of her spirits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Live On (Long After)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for lintamande's [Silmarillion Fanon Challenge](http://lintamande.tumblr.com/post/53715642979/help-me-out-silmarillion-fanon-challenge) over on tumblr, inverting the tumblr-prominent fanon that Finduilas was not fickle or shallow and could not help falling in love with Túrin and out of love with Gwindor.
> 
> My own _personal_ goal in tackling this particular inversion was to see how I might write a Finduilas whose motivations contained a good amount of shallowness instead of nothing but deep anguish, while still making her likeable or at least three-dimensional and compelling...

She'd only seen Lúthien twice, and never spoken to her, not unless one counted the pass of a look shared between widened and widening eyes as speech. That had been when her cousins had still lived among them.

Finduilas remembered the look that the princess of Doriath had given her, later, when Gwindor spoke of riding off to war, because didn't it seem like the same sort of courage, at least a little bit? But Gwindor went with her father's knowledge, if not blessing, and Orodreth was nothing like Celegorm or Curufin, in either the good or the bad.

"We're not going to beat them," Gwindor said to her, fuming and face brittle like ice, after one council meeting. Agarwaen wanted to fight openly and Gwindor had brought the notion up; Orodreth was inclined to it.

Finduilas's hand twitched, and she pulled her hand away from Gwindor's, walking imperceptibly faster than they'd been before. She did not wish to once more shut her eyes and duck her head for a few seconds of secondhand shame while he made a fool of himself with such an outburst - less so when it was only the two of them with all attention on each other. "So we should just hide here? You saw him before the Nirnaeth, and you see him now. Was he happier then?"

She pressed her lips tight together and her gaze slide to the ground. "Long odds don't make something impossible," Finduilas murmured. "If anyone should know that…"

Gwindor stared down at her. "The events are not the same. Nor the people. And even if you wish for another miracle, why should there not be collateral damage even worse that springs from it? We are _cursed_ , Faelivrin."

His face was dire, and his eyes burned like a fen ringed by scars and weathering across his face, like the craggy mountains ringing Dorthionion as she'd seen when she was a child.

 

\--

 

"Gwindor offered to show me some of the pools and foothills south of the city that I haven't seen yet," the Adan said. "Would you like to come with us?"

She'd not paid much attention to the man when he'd first entered Nargothrond. Little surprise, though, as she'd spent a large portion of her energy at that time stopping up the cracks in the city that were letting through whispers of Gwindor being a thrall, that his return signaled their realm's demise. (That, when she was not tending him herself, or to her other duties.) His _name_ , perhaps, had caught her attention, as it did again now - with him bathed and clothed so that he might have appeared as one of her father's lords, it seemed now doubly-unfitting.

Finduilas glanced at the bench he'd stood from upon her entrance to the room. "You'll have more luck finding him near his rooms, or the gates," she murmured. "This terrace wasn't carved out until a few years ago."

Something in his eyes seemed to turn downcast then, farther away, the grey almost darkening. He was solemn. Serious. A look that would have fit better below, in the city's main halls, than here beneath the high afternoon sun that filtered through stone carved like roots of a tree latticed across the open ceiling. It did not suit him ill though; rather the opposite.

"You'll not accompany us, then?" he asked, his voice taking a slightly more formal tone.

A walk through the foothills would be nice. Not the same, of course, as the lovely springs and lakes dotting the mountains of her grandfather's land. But a pleasant reminder all the same.

And yet her desk was piled high with duties she needed to see to for her father, requests for her time and attention to various projects from Nargothrond's lords, inquiries from the city's populace… There'd been a time when she planned feasts, and the city was bright with the spirits of their people; there'd been danger, certainly, but time enough to spare to go walking with her friends and her betrothed if she wished. Now she and her father had risen to take the place of those who had left, and more and more duties risen to take the place of such time, trailing solemnity as they did so.

"Perhaps another time, when I should not already be attending to the city's concerns," Finduilas said. She gave a small nod of her head and an equally small smile. "And please, convey my regrets also to Lord Gwindor, if you would be so kind."

Agarwaen gave a bow to her in return before he turned to leave, and Finduilas lingering watched him go, the rare sun glinting on the shine of his black hair and fair features, and regret threading her heart.

 

\--

 

If Agarwaen had been grave when he first came to Nargothrond, he had become less so over the years. Stern, he remained, but less in the manner of sadness and more as a proud, almost elven nobility. The Mormegil.

Gurthang showed no stains of orc blood to mar the sheen of its metal a duller grey-black when Finduilas saw him dismount at the gates. There were splotches on his armor though, which he would surely need to clean off… He walked with no sign of pain or injury, for which Finduilas was both thankful and, increasingly, unsurprised.

His face became friendly when reached the gate and his eyes turned to her. "Princess Finduilas," he said with a nod of his head, and she hid (showed) the small leap in her stomach with a bright returned smile. They walked together through the gate and into the city, the other men of his patrol dispersing in a slow trickle the farther they got. Finduilas's gaze strayed toward his hands, strong and curled about the pommel of his sword, deftly loosening the buckles and straps to his armor as they walked, (warm against her back, or her breast, or her hair)… She looked away, a warmth in her cheeks and chest like morning sunlight driving away the cold vestiges of night.

"Agarwaen, Faelivrin!"

He and Finduilas turned together at the sound of their names, and if that warmth persisted it was now instead as a slight shamed flush in Finduilas's face.

Gwindor looked more ill than she would have liked to see, and she felt a pang of guilt. "The campaign has been going well?" he asked - not as though he needed confirmation, with the news running rampant even beyond Nargothrond's borders, but more by way of greeting. A _bitter_ greeting, no matter how he had intended it; and Finduilas could not even be sure, any more, of what that intent actually _was_.

She tried to imagine the scene her mind had begun to weave moments before, but with Gwindor in place instead where he should be, as if as some sort of offered penance. But his hands were scarred and withered, still too thin, as was his hair, lanker and duller than when they were young… Lines about his eyes and mouth, no longer beckoning her to kiss it. She felt nothing.

When he glanced at her, it was with an odd furrow of his brow, as if he could tell something troubled her - but Agarwaen spoke before Gwindor had the chance to, for which Finduilas was grateful.

"Very well," Agarwaen answered. His eyes shone. "People are becoming hopeful, you know, on the farms that used to live in fear of raids; I've spoken with some of them there. `Doing the impossible', one of them told me a few weeks ago."

Adanedhel, many people had begun to call him, and though he looked every inch the name, his words but reminded Finduilas that the Edhil had much longer of a memory. Yet memory - did it need rule the future? Fate was mutable, she knew perhaps more than many, and those changes had sprung once from the halls here.

And his features, achingly fair as they had grown when Finduilas looked upon him again, promised more sweetly  and more certainly than did those grief-stained enough to bear the badge of the North.

Gwindor glanced at her again, and Finduilas did not meet his eyes.


End file.
